When I went looking for a foolproof pâté recipe, I saw that people were also searching for “Is pâté raw?” and that made me wonder. I thought I knew the answer, but I did a little investigation and decided to write a helpful post to share what I learned with you.

Is pâté raw? No.

Pâté is a cooked meat paste that generally contains liver. Many pâté recipes suggest not overcooking the liver—in other words, leaving some pink in the middle—but this doesn’t make the pâté raw. Some pâtés are cooked then blended and some are blended and then cooked in a water bath (bain marie).

Pâté isn’t raw but this query leads to other questions about how safe it is to eat pâté made of still-pink liver, food poisoning risks and how to safely make, eat and store pâté. Keep reading to learn more about staying safe as a fan of pâté.

More about why pâté isn’t a raw dish

All pâté recipes call for heat—even pâté recipes designed especially for dogs (yeah, that’s a real thing). Let’s first look at what’s usually in pâté and then the options for cooking pâtés. One note about the word pâté: in modern times, the terms pâté and terrine are often used interchangeably but, in this article, I’m talking about smooth pâtés where the primary meat ingredient is liver (including liver mousses and liverwurst).

Pâtés are typically made with these ingredients:

• Liver (chicken, duck, pork, beef, etc.)
• Spices, such as salt, pepper, mace, thyme, bay leaves, etc.
• Port, brandy or wine.
• Heavy cream and/or milk.
• Butter.
• Aromatics such as garlic, onions, orange zest, etc.

Why would you want to eat that raw? Yuck. I’m trying to get my head around why people think pâté is raw and I’ve come up with two things: pink meat = raw to some people and the association between pâté and food poisoning being confused with food poisoning and other raw food (like salad greens, ha).

So, if pâté isn’t raw, let’s look at how it’s cooked.

Cooking methods for liver pâté and liver mousse:

• On the stove top – You can fry the liver and aromatics on the stove top before blending all the ingredients with a food processor.
• In a water bath (also known as a bain marie) – With this method, you blend all the raw ingredients in the food processor and then pour the mix into a terrine. That terrine is placed in a larger, oven-safe dish that’s partially full of water and together, they go into the oven for cooking.

Kyle Hildebrant, in his food blog, Our Daily Brine talks about these two cooking methods in his article (and recipe) called, Chicken Liver Mousse Pâté with Port Gelée. He says that cooking the liver on the stove is perceived as easier and can give the pâté a robust flavour. But the stove top method can also leave your pâté with a gritty texture, even if you have a deluxe high-speed blender. Using the bain marie seems to make the recipe more difficult (but that’s hardly true if you think about it), gives the pâté a silky texture and leaves the pâté slightly pink (rather than brown), especially if you add some Insta Cure #1.

Cooking method for liverwurst:

• Simmer in water – For liverwurst, you grind the ingredients (often more than once), stuff the paste into a muslin, pork or collagen casing and simmer the casing in a pot of simmering water.

Okay, so now we’re firm on this: pâté isn’t raw, but the liver may still be pink in the middle when using the stove-top cooking method. So that begs the question…

How can I tell if my stove-top pâté is pleasantly pink or too raw?

I was definitely interested in this question because the first time I made pâté in recent times, I was so paranoid about over-cooking the liver that I left it too pink and it tasted disgusting: too “livery” for me. Fortunately, my husband thought it tasted okay. Bless him.

So, where’s the line between too pink and overcooked?

Talia Lavin, in her Bon Appetit article called, How to Make Pâté at Home and Be a Person Who Eats Liver, does a good job of explaining how to do achieve this. She recommends frying up your onions and seasonings first, then adding balsamic vinegar, wine and liver to the pan, all at once. This means you’re not frying the livers but cooking them gently in liquid.

Talia says, “Let the livers brown in the liquid, turning them over with a spatula so that both sides are an even color, and the insides remain slightly pink, about two to three minutes on each side. The aroma in your kitchen should be sharp, meaty, with an alliaceous kick…Turn off the burner and let the livers stand in the liquid for a few minutes, until the liquid has stopped bubbling and cooled slightly…My experiments have indicated that this is the perfect amount of time before the next step.”

My takeaway here is, even though liver cooks quickly, it still takes a couple of minutes so don’t be hasty!

Now it’s time to address the elephant in the room: pâté can give you food poisoning (but then again, so can lettuce). Life’s too short to be a fear monger but I still want to share with you what I learned about pâté and food poisoning.

The connection between pâté and food poisoning

While I was researching the raw question, I saw several articles in the British newspapers linking pâté (and dinner parties) to food poisoning.

In 2011, The Telegraph rang the warning bell with their article called, Chicken liver pâté causing hundreds to fall ill. In this article, they reported that, “There are roughly 600,000 cases [of Campylobacter] annually in England and Wales. About half are caused by contaminated chicken.”

Three years later, in 2014, chicken liver pâté was still taking down diners. The Daily Mail warned their readers in an article called, Why chicken liver pate could be the most dangerous dinner party dish: Rates of food poisoning soar due to ‘undercooking’ trend.

The article says, “Public Health England (PHE) has now issued an official food poisoning alert linking chicken livers to campylobacter, the most common form of food poisoning in the UK,” and, “80 per cent of campylobacter cases linked to large food poisoning outbreaks, as opposed to individual cases, appear to involve chicken liver dishes.”

Healthline reports that listeria is found in pâté (and sliced meats) at a reported rate of zero to six percent.

WebMD suggests that kids, the elderly, pregnant women and anyone with a compromised immune system avoid foods that are high risk for food poisoning, including, “pâtés or meat spreads that have been refrigerated.” [To view the whole list of high-risk foods, check out their article, Food Poisoning: Know Your Risks.]

So, there is a risk of food poisoning with pâté and I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it’s worth the risk or not. For me, it is. Especially if I think about the most glorious chicken liver mousse I’ve ever eaten.

If you’re going to live dangerously and make your own liver pâté, be clean. To reduce your risk of food poisoning, practice good hygiene in the kitchen. Wash your hands and anything that’s touched raw meat (especially chicken) with hot soapy water.

How to store pâté safely

Another way to reduce your risk of pâté-related food poisoning (or should I say PÂTÉ-RELATED FOOD POISONING!!!) is to eat it before it goes bad. Duh.

In David Lebovitz’s chicken liver pâté recipe (which he adapted from The Book of Schmaltz by Michael Ruhlman), he says, “The pâté will keep three to four days in the refrigerator. It can also be frozen for up to two months.”

Les Trois Petits Cochons, a New York City charcuterie, suggests that once opened, pâté will keep in the fridge from seven to 10 days.

Other estimates I saw are also in these two ballparks so stick with them.

Instead of pigging out on pâté (not that there’s anything wrong with that) or throwing rotten pâté in the green bin, use your freezer to preserve it. You can put your stove-top pâté in small mason jars (with a layer of fat, of course) and cut your bain marie pâté into slices that will last a couple of days and pop them into the freezer. You’ll feel great having a stash on hand for any pâté-related emergency.

Conclusion

Well, that’s about all I can say on whether pâté is raw (it’s not!) and whether it will give you food poisoning (maybe). Hope you enjoyed reading this and even more so, I hope you have a go-to pâté recipe that you love to make and eat! Yum!